Words from the Front

Salacious commentary concerning word foibles and linguistic underachievement, especially concerning writing, editing, grammar, usage, style, and punctuation, the microphone for which is at times appropriated for rants and reviews

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Because I Care

Tiny Flecks of Dust in Support of Your Position Do Not Make It Right—Good Usage Versus Common Usage
Being the empath I am (man, I fucking love "empath" as a noun; I also love "fucking"), most of my diatribes in this forum are about YOU, not me. I'm but a tiny speck in a giant Hoover vacuum of misguided, disgusting, facile humanity.

But I'll take a little, itsy bitsy leap and talk about myself for a bit. Actually not that—I'm going to do something really unusual and spout off about how abjectly stupid SOME of you are. Bear (not bare) with me, tools, as I'm not used to doing this (the sarcasm will be lost quickly on the brain dead; I'll guess within the first 10 comments or so).

On the interwebs, one may find evidence to support any number of bad habits. Some of you, be still my heart, have even managed to find online dictionaries to support your use of fucked-up tripe such as irregardless, could care less, and other bullshit. Somehow you've …

Book Review—Too Many Carrots

Awesome Illustrations, but the Story's Resolution, Along with How It Gets There, Is Quite Problematic. 2/5
Too Many Carrots, a children's picture book by Katy Hudson (Capstone Young Readers)

I bought this book in Barnes & Noble when Capstone marketing-blitzed it by paying for an entire table display in each store (I can't imagine what the budget was for that). I've read it several times and experienced several emotions reading it, but mostly it just makes me sad.

However You View It, "However" Is a Big Ol' Problem

In recent years, I've noticed increased misuse and abuse of punctuation, particularly in the form of comma splices and mistaken conjunctions.

Comma Splices/Run-On Sentences

What's a comma splice? Here's an example:

"I went to the store, I had to get some beer."

What we have here are two sentences joined with a comma when they should really be separated into separate with a period (full stop) or by using a conjunction. You've probably heard the term "run-on sentence" rather than "comma splice," which is technically "I went to the store I had to get some beer," the distinguishing feature being a complete lack of punctuation. These two sins are, for the most part, morally equivalent, and what they're called is pretty irrelevant anyway.